Retail establishments are trying to become more efficient by applying different and innovative operating methods that help to increase their business""s financial condition. One of the constantly pursued goals is the reduction of a customer""s waiting time in a checkout line. Being able to speed up the flow of customers through a check-out station, or to reduce cost of a checkout transaction, is critical to the success of a retail business. An evolution of the store checkout process has caused replacement of manual price keying of each item being purchased, for the process of scanning the item. Today, the bar code readers are commonly used in commercial and retail environments. In a retail checkout transaction the consumer has to present all the items he(she) wants to purchase to the cashier at a checkout register. The cashier scans each item in the order in which it is presented to him. In addition, there may be an ID check if the customer is purchasing a restricted item, such as, but not limited to, alcohol or tobacco. The transaction is completed once all the items have been scanned, all the coupons have been accepted, the total costs have been calculated, and the consumer has paid for the items. Even though scanning all the items at a checkout register takes less time than manually entering each item description into the computer, the sequential presentation to a cashier of each individual purchase can still take a long time and create long lines of customers waiting to pay for their purchases. This can cause bottlenecks at the checkout stations, reduce throughput, make customers unhappy, and affect the financial condition of a retail establishment. Self-service checkout, or xe2x80x9cself-checkoutxe2x80x9d is a new way of conducting a checkout transaction and is a rapidly growing application in the retail environment. In a self-checkout system, each customer, rather than the cashier, scans the bar codes on the items he is purchasing. Presently there exist two types of self-checkout systems.
In the first type of self-checkout system, scanning takes place at a checkout station. After selecting all the shopping items, a customer brings all the items to a checkout station. A checkout station comprises a scanner for reading the product bar codes and coupons, a weighing scale for verifying purchased item price, and a checkout terminal for generating the final bill and accepting payment. Once at the checkout station, the customer scans the bar codes on his purchases, instead of having a cashier scan his items. After all the purchases have been scanned and verified, the customer also scans any coupons he might have. The customer requests the final bill by selecting an appropriate button on the checkout terminal. In response to the customer""s request, the total purchase price is displayed on the terminal screen and the bill is printed out. The customer tenders payment to the checkout terminal. The terminal can accept payments by any standard payment methods. Once the bill has been paid and the receipt has been issued, the self-checkout transaction is finished and the customer can leave the store.
This system has inherent problems. Even though the system reduces labor costs by not having the cashier scan each item at the checkout register, it does not reduce customer""s checkout time. In fact, the system usually increases the time to checkout, because the consumers are not as experienced at scanning the products as the cashiers. Also, because product scanning does not take place until the customer completes his shopping item selection, the system does not provide the customer with the real-time item price information or the real-time total purchase price information. This lack of cost information during item selection affects consumer""s shopping efficiency. Consumers may either underspend and not purchase all the needed items, or overspend and have to return some of the purchased products.
The second type of self-checkout system consists of a rack with portable scanning terminals. Price information for each item in the store is downloaded from the store""s computer into the terminal""s memory during a time when the system usage is low or the system is non-operational. Each customer receives one scanning terminal upon placing their ID or shopper loyalty card into a card reader (e.g., magnetic stripe reader or bar code reader) in the rack at the log-in station. While shopping, the customer uses the terminal to scan bar codes associated with his purchases. The terminal has two scan trigger keys: the plus trigger key and the minus trigger key. Each trigger enables the scanning module located inside the terminal. When the consumer wishes to add a product to the group of items he wants to purchase, he uses the add trigger key to scan the product bar code. This process adds the item to the consumer""s purchased item list inside the terminal""s memory. In case the customer decides to return one of the items previously added to the purchased item list, he scans the item bar code using the minus trigger key. This process deletes the product from the customer""s purchase item list inside the terminal""s memory. In each case the information regarding the scanned item is displayed on the terminal screen. This information may include the price of the returned item as well as the quantity of the item on the customer""s buy list. The terminal also has a total key, which is used to display customer""s total transaction costs based upon the prices stored in the terminal""s memory. When the item selection has been completed, the customer places the scanning terminal back into the rack. The customer""s shopping information, which has been stored in the scanning terminal""s memory, is downloaded through the terminal rack to the store computer, where the customer""s transaction file is created. A ticket having a bar code printed thereon, wherein the bar code is encoded with the address of the customer""s transaction file inside the store computer, gets issued to the customer. The customer takes the ticket and proceeds to a checkout register. When the cashier scans the bar coded ticket, the transaction file is retrieved from the store computer. The store computer also determines the security verification measures that the customer will have to undergo at a checkout station. Those measures are determined based upon random probability function conditioned by the customer""s scanning accuracy during the past self-checkout transactions and the content of the present transaction. In certain cases all of the customer""s purchases may have to be re-scanned. After completion of the required security checks and acceptance of any coupons the customer might have, the final bill is calculated. The customer settles the bill by any standard payment method and leaves the store.
Although this approach offers many advantages over the previously described system, it still presents a few problems. There must be one scanning terminal available per each potential customer. The costs of investing in a large number of scanning terminals and in a number of terminal racks may be prohibitive for most retail establishments. Because the scanning terminal has a fixed amount of memory, the size of information that can be stored inside the terminal is limited. Also, the price information displayed after scanning each item may not be synchronized to the point of sale system database, because the product price might have changed from the time when it was downloaded into the terminal to the time when the product bar code was scanned. In addition, the customer must leave the scanning terminal at the store and can not take it home for personal use.
This invention relates to a new self-checkout system for a retail shopping environment. The system is comprised of a plurality of portable communications terminals, a store""s host computer, and a plurality of store checkout stations. Each portable communications terminal is owned or leased by the consumer using it, or made available to the consumer by the telephone network service provider. Unlike the self-checkout systems described above, the use of the new self-checkout system allows the consumers to take the device with them when they leave a store. Because a consumer can take the terminal home, he may use it for personal transactions to be described herein. The portable communications terminal has a bar code reading module and a telephone module. It may be used as cellular telephone, a modem, or as a personal hand-held scanning terminal. When using the device as a personal hand-held scanning terminal, the consumers may scan coupons or other bar coded materials and thereby make their own shopping lists. Also, a terminal resident software program may create a xe2x80x9cpredicted shopping listxe2x80x9d based upon the customer""s historical shopping profile and scanned item lists. A consumer may later retrieve these lists and use them during shopping.
The proposed self-checkout system works as follows. A consumer, upon entering a retail store, establishes a cellular communication channel between his portable communications terminal and the store""s host computer. While shopping, the customer scans each product he wants to purchase. The bar code information of the scanned item is transmitted to the store computer via the established communication channel. The store computer, upon receipt of the bar code information, updates the customer""s transaction file and sends product information, product price, and customer""s subtotal amount spent, back to the terminal. Because the data transmitted by the store computer represents the latest product information and it is received by the terminal in real-time, the information presented to the customer is more accurate and complete. The customer proceeds to a checkout register after the item selection has been finished. A cashier at the checkout register, rather than scanning every item, retrieves the customer""s transaction file from the store computer into the register. The transaction file retrieval request may be accomplished by scanning the customer""s ID. The retrieved transaction file contains, but is not limited to, individual product information, subtotal price, and required security measures. After successful security verification of the purchased items and acceptance of any coupons the customer might have, the final bill is calculated. After paying the bill, the customer terminates the communication channel between the portable communications terminal and the store computer. At this point the self-checkout transaction has been completed. Because there may be many customers shopping in a store at the same time, the system is able to carry on a number of self-checkout transactions simultaneously, without affecting a consumer""s transaction time.
Not having the cashier scan each purchased item reduces the amount of checkout time. Because the portable communications terminal is kept by the consumer, it is expected that he will take better care of the it, then if the terminal were owned by the store. This will reduce repair costs as well as the store""s capital expenditures.
Unlike the previous self-checkout systems, the invention provides benefits to both, the consumer and the retail establishment. The consumer gets accurate real-time product information about his purchases and reduces his store checkout time. The store increases its customer flow, retains satisfied customers, and significantly reduces its capital and operating expenses. The store""s capital and operating expenses may be reduced even further by sharing some of the costs with the telephone network provider.
Because the store computer can keep track of all the scanned products that were selected or placed back on the shelves, marketing specialists could use this information to evaluate consumer preferences and market trends, as well as track inventory.